Like No One Ever Was
by AliceUnderSkies13
Summary: A one-shot that looks at a more realistic side of the Pokemon world. Rated T for violence and sensitive topics. This is my first fan-fic, so please review. I'd love to get some feedback.


City walls stared oppressively down at the black haired boy crouching at its feet. Dirty tears of rain streamed silently down its face, dampening his clothes as he leaned against the silver barricade that sheltered him from the menacing world of the underground. In the wall was a door, a great steely door that opened and closed every now and then. Figures covered in shadow would emerge, then slip back into the ever-present darkness, their hoary eyes looming over the street like search lights. The impassable metal door stood unmoving, taking no notice of the boy leaning against its sister wall. He felt the door against his consciousness, its pretense of existence too great to ignore. What lie beyond it, he may never know. It stood as a monument to the unknown terrors that lurked within his mind, the forbidden urges that bit at his brain and danced in front of his blank eyes. His pupils slid to stare down his peripherals as the door once more cracked open in the dim light of the lamppost. Its reaching shadow trembled as the lamppost wavered weakly like a dying pidgey's heart, the circle of light under its bright eye slowly fading. The black haired boy gawked at the pool of preserved daylight, his dark eyes wandering.

The door was suddenly flung open, an indistinguishable object was thrown, and the door was shut once again. Very simple: door open, object thrown, object strikes the ground with a sickening crack, door shut, all silent. A dozen pairs of glowing eyes materialized in the mere feet from where the unknown object landed, red eyes that pulsated with evil, twisted light. The exposed skulls of a houndour pack stepped out of the absent darkness, leeched and petrified, crude cracks etching themselves in the white bone. Their disgusting heads floated in the hazy light like so many ghosts haunting the streets. Shards of this macabre mask fractured and fell onto the concrete, causing a growl to rise in the houndour's throats. The boy against the wall watched them walk cautiously towards the hidden victim lying wordlessly on the ground. Lithe black bodies, gaunt from starvation, inched forward, the thin black legs shaking from fatigue. Blood red paws, curving claws that scraped the sidewalk like nails on a chalkboard, and frothing fangs coated with foam dragged themselves across the concrete. The torn pads came to rest only inches from their target when they were suddenly shredded by the frantic teeth of other starving beasts. They all pounced upon one another, biting and ripping the fragile skin of their comrades. Yelps filled the air, breaking the impenetrable silence from before as the brawl for a scrap of decaying food commenced. The identity of the object lying on the ground, a dead and bleeding growlithe, just another useless piece of trash meant as a hungry dog's meal.

The houndour destroyed the bloody carcass, hungrily gulping down the tufts of hair and tattered meat. This unforgivable act of cannibalism, a canine feasting on the flesh of one of its own, was unreal and distant in the black haired boys mind. Screeches of pain as they choked on half chewed bits of flesh made the air heavy, and blood flowed between the cracks in the sidewalk. It dried black, becoming nothing but an assumed shadow when the sun rose the next day. The vicious fight continued until the moon rose to its peak in the loveless sky and the black haired boy was half-asleep against the wall. He hung his limp head down against his neck, and his eyelids fluttered.

When the corpse had been stripped clean, an injured pup noticed the boy, asleep and oblivious to the murkrow that were gathering around the ravaged bodies. They were big, black messengers from Death himself, with ebony feathers that dripped with sultry blood and needle-like beaks that pulled at the eyes of the newly dead houndour that littered the street. The little pup suppressed a whimper and scuffled over to the black haired boy, dragging its broken legs across the bloodied ground. It glared awkwardly up at the pale face masked by locks of sable hair, and watched as the chest rose and fell with slow, easy breaths. The boy suddenly twitched, his eyes flickering like the lamp light and all at once opening. The houndour recoiled into its own shadow, attempting to melt into the nightmare. It saw the devilish look in the boy's pupils, but could not comprehend its meaning in time to save its side from being broken by a sharp blow from a shadowed foot. Hitting the ground with a revolting crash, and then lying still, its ribs crushed from the impact. The boy with black hair glanced up at it for a moment, watching its yellowed eyes go glassy, and then fell back asleep.

In his dreams he saw a monochrome world. A civilization built from the principles of freezing black and white. They swirled together in his dreams, forming shining, silver pewter that coated the city walls. Nothing but astronomical buildings that touched the sky and metal tunnels that reached into the depths of the earth. What was this Pewter City? A makeshift prison for the exiled and tortured who could no longer survive in the outside world. Juvenile extremists could come and live at peace, their childish tendencies mimicked by one another, eventually forming one common idea: a flat gray plain of nothingness.

The dawn came fast, breaking at a maximum speed like an arcanine flying around the width of the world. Something had awoken him, a color, a bright color, the color red. All of the sudden he was aware of the blood dripping into his eyes and he bolted awake. A murkrow cawed and flapped its wings against his neck, fleeing before he could realize what was going on. The murkrow's wings beat and it ascended into the gray, cloudless sky, its stark feathers falling all around it. The black haired boy gritted his teeth in annoyance, his hand coming to touch his face where the murkrow had been mercilessly pecking at his skin. Blood was slowly trickling down his cheek, he felt it. It was a deep red, like the blood on the street, like his name.

Red glared down at his hand which was now smeared with blood, his eyes frozen in place. Another day in Pewter City, where morality was defined by an ignorant shade of gray. He stood up, feeling the wall as he rose, imagining what lived and breathed behind it. Turning on his heel, he continued down the street, past the wall and the door, past the corpses of the dead houndour and past the scavenging murkrow and spearow. The small, red faced spearow squawked irritably as he walk through a flock of them, sending them up in a flurry of feathers. Such nasty birds, with gnarled claws and beaks flecked with signs of disease. They lacked the darkness of the murkrow that hid their filthy selves from the rest of the world.

The buildings and shops in Pewter city were ruined, all smashed from burglars and looters, their walls beaten by the fierce winds that whipped across their vulnerable faces. One apartment on the first floor, front window cracked, seemed to whisper in the silence. But Red soon discovered it to be the mere chatter of a radio sitting close to the shattered glass. He walked by without a glance, his eyes turned away but his ears and mind listening intently to the broken static.

"Temperature…75 degrees, overcast with a 50 % chance of rain today…"

Children ran by, their feet tripping over the pockmarked road, and they were laughing. A meowth followed in playful pursuit, its whiskers beaded with raindrops. Red noticed its head, its golden charm was gone. Every meowth who roamed the city was without a gold charm, they made for good money. He thought he felt something jingle faintly in his pocket as he thought this, but he just shrugged, passing it off as a single, unimportant illusion.

"The number of pocket monster thefts has risen recently, probably due to those…what do you call them?...illegal pokemon fighting, or something like that…"

Red saw a gang of cowering felines, all led by a fearsome looking persian, one with fiery eyes and its charm still intact. It growled when it saw him, its hair prickling on its neck.

"Nothing but sick and twisted, those people who do this…steal pokemon from innocent people, and make 'em fight…its cruel and unusual, that's all that is, just torture…"

Past a vendor, steam rising from its cheap grills and ovens. The haze billowed into the air like a massive dust tornado, bringing with it the foul smells of the city. Dirt, rotten food, death, the shameless scavengers who roamed the streets and skies in search of decaying meat. He heard the whack of a knife striking a cutting board, a sharp metallic sound that reverberated in his ears. The fat man on the other side of the counter looked over at him, offering a paper bowl of chopped oddish. Green leaves dipped in slowpoke fat, their bluish bodies lying on the ground around the vendor like pieces of discarded garbage. Red shook his head, backing quickly away from the man, his hungry stomach nevertheless eyeing the soggy bowl in front of him. Keep walking, keep walking, must get away.

"And another kidnapping occurred last night, a fourteen-year-old girl it seems…went out for a walk and never came…her name was, let's see, it was.."

Blue, how he wished the sky to be blue when he looked up at it, but it was not, it was gray. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and looked down into the abandoned alleyway. It seemed abandoned, vacant except for the scurrying of the rattata in the gutters, their sick little nails scratching against the concrete and their bloodied, pink-eyed irises staring up from the darkness. Red noticed the falling shadows on the ground, shifting and growing in the faint light. Then muffled cries. "Stop it…Stop it please!"

Red heard this clearly in his mind, these mindless pleas for help that were so quiet in the stillness. "Please…someone, someone help me!" Now bystanders in the street turned their heads slightly, but remained away from the alley, the thin corridor of God knows what. Only Red stood in front of it, just like the door by the wall, only much different. He practically leapt into the alleyway, scaring the poor rattata who were feasting on a corroded metapod shell, the newly born butterfree off somewhere trapped by a spinarak's clever and tortuous web. It crawled closer to its prey, pincers poised, venom dripping with its mouth. Red ran closer to the origin of the muted screams, feeling the spinarak somewhere in his consciousness, creeping forever closer. The butterfree struggled it its strait jacket made of unbreakable thread, silently shrieking in fear as its approaching death loomed closer. "Help me! Someone help me!"

It seemed to be an infinite tunnel of darkness as Red raced across the concrete, hearing his breath in his ears and his heart beat in his chest as he ran. He finally saw them, a group of four or five boys armed with weapons, and encircling a wall, or more likely a fresh new victim waiting to be slaughtered. "Hey, what are you doing?" Red growled, his voice thick with malice. The boys turned all at once, like so many robots or clocks set at the same time. Their eyes glowed white in the darkness, the light refracting off their dilated pupils. He saw them and remembered something from the other day, or perhaps it had been last week, or last month, or only a few hours ago….

He had walked down to the Flint District early one day, where towering buildings of sketchy appearance rose up out of the ground and grimer and muk slunk about in the street curbs. Past the the out-of-place nursing home that was placed at the end of the road where the old Professor now resided, and over the piles of dead pokemon infested with weedle and blood thirsty beedrills. He saw a jewelry shop conveniently selling sableye eyes, the forsaken creatures that were forced to mine deep in the crevices of the earth, only to have their precious eyeballs ripped out after their job was complete. Red walked until he came to the row of apartments across from the museum, which was ravaged by crooks and greedy thieves. A dirty building covered in slime and disgusting filth that was slowly rotting its fragile structure. Inside it was the same, gray and dingy. A few darkened staircases leading up and down. Red took the third one from the door, it led down. It seemed to stretch for miles, lengthening like a black snake. Lights began to flicker as the staircase widened, flashing on and off, constantly blocked by an unknown source crouching over a seizing computer screen. Red stopped after his foot left the last step, his footsteps echoing throughout the cramped room. Monitors, medical tools, and cages occupied by dead or dying pokemon were strewn across the floor. Just another biopunk trapped in a tiny, unlit room filled with his twisted thoughts, his own asylum created just for him. Red chose to ignore the atrocities around him and looked up at the biopunk sitting in a rolling chair by his desk. The fluorescents cast a monochrome shadow across Red's pale face, giving light to the blood that was so carefully slicked across his cheek. A bruised eye, a bloody lip, just another run-in with the law enforcement, as pathetic as it was.

"Green," he muttered. No response, just the scratch-scratch of a scalpel on paper, or was that flesh? "Green, are you deaf or something?"

A laugh came from the figure in the rolling chair. "You're so rude. Can't you see I'm doing something here?" Green retorted. His shoulders shook with hysteria, his head bobbing awkwardly on his neck. Red ignored him and continued to stare blankly ahead.

"I need this one healed." He said, presenting a poke ball to the hysteric Green before him. He regretted doing this, resorting to such a sick and demented alternative. Associating with a psychopath of science and underground genetics, but he had no choice. Ever since the center had closed, Joy becoming suddenly bankrupt, her debt too high to handle. And then just disappearing to open a most disgraceful attraction at the edge of town, her excuse, "I had no other choice!" Red's eyes narrowed when he remembered hearing that, her voice falsely cracking over the static of the radio. He was different though, he really was. He truly didn't have any other choice, he needed Green, or everything, his livelihood, his money….his fun, would all disappear. He shook his head fiercely and tossed the poke ball at Green's exposed head. "Just heal it for me." He mumbled angrily.

Green's hand came to feel where the poke ball had struck his skull, and he turned around in his chair to face Red. "So demanding." He chided cynically. "What happened? You lose another fight?" His wild eyes, bulbous and salt-rimmed, glared at Red from behind a glass wall, a wall that separated the two from ever understanding one another. Red was silent, his hands clenching into antagonizing fists. Green's lips curved into a malicious grin.

"Of course you did! You never win, Red!" he laughed. He hid his face in his hands. "So ridiculous, you're the only one who keeps such worthless pieces of trash even after they fail you. I will never get you." He bent over and picked up the poke ball. "But I will heal this piece of crap for you, because I'm just nice like that," he finished, polishing the poke ball with his sleeve. Green held it up to his face, his eyes crossing in order to see it. "What's in here again? A vulpix, right?" Red did not reply.

"Just do your job, Green."

"All right, if you say so, old friend." Green placed the ball in a crude, makeshift machine next to his desk. It glowed red, revitalizing the torn and bleeding pokemon inside. "This'll cost you about 5,000 poke, ok?"

Red stood still. "No way I'm paying that much," he spat. Green's face disfigured itself all at once, becoming a chagrining devil in the darkness. He jumped to his feet, slamming his chair to the ground and causing the deformed pokemon in the cages to whimper. The crazed face came towards Red, the yellowed teeth gnashing at the thin air. When Green spoke it came out in a controlled whisper.

"Yes. You. Will," he muttered. "There is no way you're not paying for it. I do this for every day, every single—''

"That's complete bull," Red interjected. Green clenched his teeth and banged his fist down on his desk. When he composed himself he looked back at Red.

Wringing his hands together, he said, "Now just don't…don't interrupt me. Ok Red?" His inquiry was met by the utmost quiet, so he smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright, so everything's fine now. You will pay and I will heal your useless vulpix, and all is right in Pewter city! And nothing will ever change here and you will come back tomorrow and I will heal your vulpix and you will pay again, a never ending cycle of endless madness." He was heading onto the path that departed from reality now, his pupils focusing on the unseen things around them. "You see, Red, everything is so complex in this world. You, me, and pokemon. Yes, pokemon are very complex, their genes are so diverse and infinitely different. One can create a hybrid out of anything. Rock and flying, water and electricity, even water and fire. The possibilities are staggering! And no one, least of all you, Red, will ever judge me. No, because you're the exact same as I am. A poor, struggling human obsessed with something forbidden. For me it is the art of genetic engineering, experimenting and mutilating for the sake of science. And for you it is the brutal art of forced violence, vicious fights full of blood and gore! And you will never change, men like me and you never change." He took a deep breath and leaned against his desk. His tired eyes looked up once more, that deranged smile blossoming on his face like a bloody rose. "We are like no one ever was, Red. Wanderers of society, unknowingly hated by humanity and striving for some kind of evidence that we are indeed, human beings." Red shuffled nervously where he stood, his eyes stoic and unblinking. Green kept his face cast towards the ground until Red finally decided to turn and leave.

Red was a quarter up the stairs when Green asked quietly, "So who was it? What cop came to make you bleed this time? Was it Officer Jenny again?" His voice was fringed with laughter as Red continued to climb the staircase, his sarcastic chuckles reverberating in Red's ears…..

He recalled this incident as he ran through the alley, his eyes staring intently on the glowing pupils of the boys. His purpose made itself known once again and he charged the boys, tossing his poke ball at the same time. "Get them, vulpix!" he roared. The scarlet dog, its majestic tails ripped and no longer present from years of fighting, materialized in front of the surprised crowd. Its flaring eyes burned, its fangs perforating the soft temple of one of the boys. He screamed much too late, the vulpix was already onto its next victim. Blood splattered across his pelt, its teeth coated in its victim's sticky life blood. The throat of one boy was slashed open, the other two receiving blows to the head from Red's heavy fist. The survivors sprinted away, retreating into the shadows. Vulpix growled, its breathing hard. Red looked sympathetically down at it, his poor vulpix pawing at the ground and lagging its tongue in thirst.

It was then that he noticed the victim, the one who had shrieked so many times. A young girl was sitting against the wall, her hands covering her bleeding head and her limbs shaking. "Hey," Red said, nudging her shin with his foot. She flinched, whimpering quietly. "Hey, were those boys bothering you?" Red asked. A little late for that question, 'those boys' were already lying dead in their own blood.

She started, as if she just now noticed him too. Her long, blonde locks hid her eyes, which were filled with a million unseen tears. She nodded solemnly, slowly getting to her feet and adjusting her shirt back onto her slight shoulders. "Yes, thank you." She heaved a sigh and giggled faintly. "I almost thought no one could hear me screaming." Her dark eyes looked up at Red. "Thanks again Mr..."

"Red," he stated automatically. "My name's Red." The little girl flashed a small smile, a form of her gratitude.

"What have you done that you look so sad, Red?" she asked quietly. Red looked up, shocked at her forwardness. There was no answer. "Well," she began, "Whatever it is shouldn't matter anymore. You just saved a girl named Yellow, and she thanks you for that." She smiled kindly. There was a long silence until he realized he could no longer stand her presence, her obliviousness, and her misguided words of so called kindness. She cast her eyes down, and he seized his chance.

Red nodded uncomfortably. "Well, I'll be going then. Come on vulpix." He stared down at the girl for a few more seconds and then made to walk out of the alleyway, leaving Yellow to run out of the back alley and into the approaching sunlight. Vulpix was slowly following in pursuit. It didn't care that it just killed two young children, that it was forced to fight endlessly by this man in front of it. Desensitized to everything around it, to murder, violence, flesh, even acts of cruelty against itself. It did not know what Red was, what he made it do day after day. It chose to conveniently forget and live in a blissful ignorance full of pain and self-injury. But what was Red really? A good man, he thought to himself. I am a good man.


End file.
